1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an integrated customer management system and method using an LCD barcode displayed on a mobile terminal (mobile phone such as cellular phone, PDA, and pager, etc.), and more particularly to a customer management system and method which can simply and conveniently identify customers using both commodity barcodes being widely used and customer information barcodes on cellular phones, realize effective marketing at minimum cost according to the purchase propensities or preferences of the customers for commodities, and rapidly provide the customers with a variety of commodity information and a variety of benefits based on the results of their barcode usage at any place, thereby effectively managing the customers integratedly.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional customer management systems have managed customers using customer management cards in the form of a magnetic card or paper. In the case where a customer is given a customer management card in the form of paper, a customer manager records the purchase contents of the customer on his or her card and provides the customer with benefits based on the results of his or her card usage, so as to induce the purchase motive of the customer. For example, a beauty salon may record the purchase contents of a customer on his or her customer management card each time he or she receives a beauty treatment service, and provide the customer with the beauty treatment service free of charge once he or she has received the beauty treatment service ten times. Customer management cards in the form of a magnetic card are used in a similar manner to those in the form of paper and may be typical cards frequently used, such as refueling station customer management cards, department store customer management cards and the like. Coupons that fast food houses, refueling stations, etc. distribute to customers may also be interpreted to be a kind of customer management card in the general sense.
The above-mentioned conventional customer management systems have the following disadvantages.
Firstly, it is inconvenient for users to carry customer management cards. Recently, the number of eating houses, entertainment establishments, department stores, etc. employing customer management cards as customer invitation means is on a rapidly increasing trend, resulting in a flood of various customer management cards. Moreover, it is current reality that a variety of credit cards and transport cards (subway and bus cards) are present in addition to such customer management cards. As a result, it is illogical to expect users to carry such customer management cards individually. Furthermore, most users often handle such customer management cards with little importance and are thus liable to lose them. This trend is shown more in men than women because men have a relatively weak sense of economy as compared with women. In conclusion, although customer management cards are good means capable of inviting a larger number of customers, they cannot realize so satisfactory results as expected.
Secondly, the conventional customer management systems are not efficiently linked with a point-of-sales (POS) system that inputs records of customer usages and calculates the amount of money to be paid by the customers on the basis of the inputted records. In other words, the conventional customer management systems are operated independently of the POS system although they are in close connection with the POS system. Provided that the conventional customer management systems are efficiently linked with the POS system, they will be able to readily analyze the purchase propensities or preferences of customers for commodities and systematically and effectively manage the customers on the basis of the analyzed results. At any rate, it is current reality that the conventional customer management systems manage customers in such a simple and primitive manner that, for example, as seen in most department stores, the customers present receipts for commodities purchased in a day, and employees of the department stores check the presented receipts one by one and offer premiums corresponding to the total purchasing prices respectively to the customers.
Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an integrated customer management system wherein barcodes for individual identification can be displayed on cellular phones considered to be always carried by customers, thereby overcoming the problems with conventional customer management cards, or the inconvenience of carrying them and the risk of losing them, and barcodes employed in most POS systems can be utilized as customer identification means and means for providing specific benefits to predominant customers (e.g., electronic coupons using barcodes), thereby enabling the efficient linking with the PSO systems.
In accordance with the present invention, the above and other objects can be accomplished by providing a customer management system using an LCD barcode displayed on a mobile terminal comprising wireless barcode scanners for recognizing the barcodes corresponding to customer information and commodity information; a plurality of customer servers for receiving the customer information and commodity information from the barcode scanner, extracting personal details of customers from the received customer information, analyzing commodity purchase information of the customers and their purchase propensities or preferences for commodities, storing the analyzed results and sending the customer information, the commodity purchase information of the customers and information regarding the purchase propensities or preferences of the customers for commodities to a central management server; and the central management server adapted to receive and store the information sent from the customer servers, share information with the customer servers and retrieve desired information from a given one of the customer servers.